The new civil rights leaders: Emerging voices in the 21st century

The new civil rights leaders: Emerging voices in the 21st century

By: Matt Pearce and Kurtis Lee

03/05/2015

Some of the concerns are old — voting rights, police misconduct, racial profiling. Others — such as trans rights and access to technology — are more recent. Much in the spirit of activists who pushed for civil rights a half century ago, a new generation is fighting battles old and new. A sampling of these emerging leaders across the country:

Opal Tometi

DIRECTOR, BLACK ALLIANCE FOR JUST IMMIGRATION

AGE: 30

BROOKLYN, N.Y.

A first-generation Nigerian American, Tometi has been active in immigrant rights for much of the last decade. As director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, she became a vocal opponent of Arizona’s controversial SB-1070. At the time, she said the law was meant to “destroy communities.” Since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Tometi co-founded Black Lives Matter which calls for policing reforms.

“This is a challenging moment, but we must maintain the integrity of our message and moral movement,” she wrote in a December Huffington Post piece. “We still have the moral high ground, and we cannot allow for it to be undermined.”